ABSTRACT
In the short story, ‘Averroes’s search’,1 the great Latin American writer Jorge Luis Borges considers a case of understanding which fails; an effort to comprehend which has been defeated. It is neither the complexity of universe, nor its notorious amenability to contradictory interpretations, which in this case defies the power of intellect. It is the partiality of intellect itself, its tendency to see some of the things rather than others, which is responsible for the defeat. Any intellect, however powerful, sets about its work loaded with its own past; this past is simultaneously its liability and its asset. Thanks to its past, the intellect is able to see; because of it, it is bound to remain partially blind.
